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Ambushing the Void explores the margins of 21st century America, presenting characters seeking meaning in a world overrun by surveillance technologies, environmental decay, and drug epidemics. In “Red Tide,” a sober home uses predictive analytics to quantify recovery. In “Multiverses,” ghosts haunt the living via social media. “Such Strange Suns" presents a blind girl who misconstrues Amazon Alexa for God, while “Theory of Mind” reveals the world of professional Sock Puppets writing fake product reviews. These unforgettable, insightful stories are sympathetic and idiosyncratic reflections on contemporary life—virtual, real, and imagined.

"Ambushing the Void is, like every great book, tender and merciless in its explorations of the human arrangement. The stories here are about love and addiction, which might as well be the same thing in most cases—compulsions that make us suffer and thereby feel more alive. McAdams writes from inside those compulsions, never flinching at the ruin they engender. Even as his characters lie to themselves, he forces us to face the truth. I tore through these tales and didn’t want to look back at them, but I did. You will, too.”Steve Almond, author of God Bless America & Other Stories